Putting Out Fire (With Gasoline)
by Amatara
Summary: When you've pulled someone back from the brink, how do you put them back together again? A series of recordings and interviews, made at the Spokane Valley Hospital, where Dale Cooper was taken after being freed from BOB's control.


Author's Notes:

I was lucky enough to find not one, but _two_ betas to help me hammer this story into shape. Thank you, Sanguinity and Nemo_the_Everbeing, you were both amazing! Any remaining mistakes are, of course, my own.

A small warning: while there's some disturbing material in here (vague references to sexual abuse, discussion of mental health issues, etc) it's by no means as explicit as what was in the show. If you were okay with canon, I think it's safe to say you'll be fine with this as well.

* * *

^O^

**Harry Truman, Twin Peaks resident, Sheriff, friend**

**June 15, 1989**

When we pulled him out of that place… I keep saying 'that place' because that's what we saw, Andy and me. We saw him walk into that circle of sycamores, through a curtain that appeared from nowhere, and vanish into thin air. What was behind the curtain, I don't have a clue. Coop described it as a physical place, a room where he was trapped when BOB had control over his body. I'm not… I couldn't say if it's true or just something his mind put together to distance himself from what BOB put him through. God knows he deserved any defense he could build himself. But when we pulled him out… he wasn't the Dale Cooper I'd known. Hell, the first thing he ever said to me wasn't about the case or the FBI but about some damn pie he'd had in a place off the highway. He had this sort of energy that was contagious. We all felt it, Hawk and Andy and Lucy and me. If you're asking me now if we can put him back together again, God help me, I don't know what to say.

His rescue, though – that was something else. Even with every deputy, every Bookhouse Boy and dutiful citizen pitching in, we could never have pulled it off on our own. But we got help. Cooper's friends… Well, a man should be so lucky to have friends like those.

You've heard some of this already, right? Coop went AWOL three weeks after Annie was taken by Windom Earle. I don't know how we'd have tracked him down without Denise Bryson and her DEA connections. The woman is a bulldog when she needs to be. That, and she's got a lot of really discreet friends. Anyway, it wasn't a pretty picture she painted. The final tally was two rapes, three violent assaults, plus one attempted kidnapping, all of minors. And that's just the ones for which we could place Cooper in the vicinity. Before that, he'd been off the map for two full weeks. I can't stand to think…

There's only circumstantial evidence, thank God, nothing that would hold up in court, but there was no denying it once we knew what to look for. We managed to see one of the kids, show him the picture of BOB. Albert had to sedate him to stop him screaming.

It was Annie, if you'll believe it, who came up with the clue. Some obscure volume she dug up in the convent, describing a ritual to banish Black Lodge spirits. More mumbo-jumbo than medicine, as Albert called it, but it was all we had. Turned out it was enough. In the end it was Audrey Horne who pulled it off. Got Coop to trust her so we could spring the trap shut, and then did the deed herself. I was there, of course, through all of it, but mostly it feels like I was just along for the ride. So here we are now, waiting, hoping for him to pull through.

The doctors can't say if he'll make a full recovery. The first day he was here he tried to open up his wrists with a nail file. We've set up a round-the-clock watch since then, but God knows he's earned the right to some privacy, so most of the time we don't even set foot in the room. At least I don't. Audrey does, sometimes, and so does Albert, and I feel like a coward for not trying, but I can't go in there and look past the fact that he carried BOB's spirit inside him. The spirit that killed Laura, and Maddie… and Josie. Does Cooper have BOB's memories from when he was Leland? I think about that and it kills me. How can he find peace with himself if I can't even –

He's verbal, and coherent, but he's been refusing therapy. They've tried other ways to draw him out, but no luck. Yesterday Lucy had the idea of handing him a dictaphone, because we know he used to make private recordings. I suggested it to his treating physician, but… I don't know. I think we need a small miracle. Though if anyone deserves a miracle, it would have to be Coop.

^O^

**Dale Cooper, personal recording**

**June 17, 1989, 8am**

Valley Hospital, Spokane. Special… _Former _Special Agent Dale Cooper speaking.

Have received this dictaphone – brand new, as my own seems to have been misplaced in the, ah, turmoil of recent events – along with a simple request. To use it, and start at the beginning, and leave nothing out.

I'm not sure I was given a request as much as an order. One I have little choice but to comply with. They told me that, from now on, I would always have choices again. It seems it's not that simple.

I can endure this. For Laura's sake. For the sake of all that is good and true, I must endure it. If I fail, it means the sacrifices of all those around me have been in vain, and that is not acceptable. For all of their sakes, I need to survive this, and I will. And if I have to keep telling myself that until I believe it…

Oh, God. I do not know if I can. I don't know. I don't –

**June 17, 1989, 3.30pm**

Diane, forgive me for addressing you. It is not my intention to cause you distress, or at least no more than I already have. I don't doubt news of my predicament has reached you by now. But I sure could use your help.

I need to order my thoughts, Diane, if I ever want to make sense of them. I'm uncertain if any good will come from it, but the doctors believe so. More importantly, so do Harry and Albert and Audrey and Denise. If those four people who have been so good to me, so instrumental in freeing me from that place, all say the same thing, then something must still be right with the world. But I cannot do this alone. And if any person should be witness to this, it only makes sense this person would be you. I have always held you in great esteem, Diane, though I hardly expressed it as often as I should have.

I am not at all confident this tape will ever reach you. The moment it leaves this room, it may well be claimed by the same army of white-coated gentlemen who have been attempting for weeks to convince me nothing I have experienced is real. Chances are it will never reach you at all. But it brings me comfort to imagine anyway.

Concerning my lapse of this morning: it appears I suffered a panic attack. I am not certain how I imagined such a thing would feel, Diane, but surely not like this. I was contemplating the difficulty of what I was asked to do when my throat constricted, and I found I couldn't speak or move. I seemed to be floating, disconnected from my body. Not at all how one would expect panic to feel. It was a distressing sensation, and altogether too similar to the loss of control I experienced when BOB… when I was trapped in the Lodge. But it has passed for now, and I will endeavor not to repeat it.

Am expecting Albert to visit at four, as has been his habit every day for the past few weeks. We don't talk much, but his presence grounds me. His anger as well. He doesn't blame me for anything, which seems more than I deserve, but he is upset and frustrated and makes no effort to hide it. All the others are so careful around me. Compared to guilt or despair or pity, anger seems far less destructive an emotion. I only wish I could find some in myself.

Am quite convinced Albert hasn't had a proper night's sleep since I was brought here. I feel like I am letting him down. Letting all of you down, Diane. I will have to do better.

So – they said to start at the beginning. How do I even do that, Diane? My life, the only life I recall vividly these days, began in that circle of sycamore trees. But I will try. I suspect you imagine the day I was born there were black clouds in the sky and the air was heavy with rain, because that's how stories like these usually start. Not mine.

I can't vouch for the facts personally, but Dad says it was a splendid April morning, the first truly warm day of the year. As he was driving Mom to the hospital, a truck loaded with chickens burst a tire and capsized on the motorway in front of them. In the end they spent three hours stuck without water in a baking car, so I expect Dad knows what he is talking about. I am less convinced he knows about this: the night before I was born, Mom dreamed. In this dream she saw me, as an old man, sitting on a black leather couch in a shadowed room. And she saw another man, laughing, wearing my face, but she felt certain this man could not be me.

I know now she saw my future – a possible future, because in the end I did not grow old in that room after all. I have always believed in free will, Diane, but now… Was this fate always waiting for me? Could nothing I did have prevented it? Or was there some warning I should have heeded and did I simply not fight hard enough?

Feel tired now. I haven't talked this long for quite some time. Not as myself, at least – though as BOB, I'm sure, I talked plenty. Thank you for listening. Or at least permitting me to think you are.

^O^

**Lucy Moran, Twin Peaks resident, receptionist, Twin Peaks Sheriff's Office**

**June 20, 1989**

I like Agent Cooper. Everyone liked him. You could trust him, you know? Sure, he talked funny sometimes, but he always treated us with respect: me and the Sheriff and Hawk and Andy and Doctor Hayward, and poor, poor Laura, even though she was dead. He seemed sad for a while, after they punished him for shooting that Renault guy, but then the Sheriff made him deputy and he met Annie, who is the sister of Norma, who owns the diner across town. And even with all the terrible things that happened, like the chess game and the killings, he seemed okay then. I got him donuts one day for a picnic by the lake – his favorite ones with white icing and chocolate sprinkles – and he thanked me and smiled, just like he used to. But then someone took Annie, and he went to find her and came back, and… Well, I guess it wasn't him who came back after all.

It wasn't me who noticed, though. It was Audrey. You know Audrey – she got hurt in that bank explosion, but they got her out okay, even if she was in a wheelchair for a while. So, well, she talked to Agent Cooper after the Sheriff and Andy brought him back from the woods. She said he talked like a stranger. Kind of like, when they brought him back, they left some of him behind. She said when she looked at him, her skin got all tingly, like ice. She asked me if I believed in spirits. I said I didn't know, and I hadn't talked to Agent Cooper yet, what with him being hurt and all. But Andy said he was all quiet and scary and Annie had screamed when he went to see her, and I could see the Sheriff was worried too.

So that was when we decided, Audrey and I. That we were gonna join the Bookhouse Boys. It shouldn't be only boys, you know – that's just silly. We didn't even ask if we could. We just went, one night when I knew from Andy they were meeting, and we told them we wanted in. Audrey said she grew up in this town and she'd seen things that no one else ever saw, and what gave them the right to keep her out? And I said if they were gonna guard the town from evil, and I was gonna have a baby in this town, I sure deserved to have my say about evil too. And that was that.

I think it's at the Bookhouse Boys – we let them keep the name, by the way, what did we care? – that we really saw how Agent Cooper had changed. The Sheriff invited him a few times, after he'd gotten well enough to go out, but not go home to Philadelphia – that's where he works, when he isn't handling cases in other states. That other man, Doctor Rosenfield, was there too. He came back to Twin Peaks for no reason anyone ever said, though Sheriff Truman told me he's Agent Cooper's good friend and let's leave it at that. But one time I saw Agent Cooper looking at Doctor Rosenfield all funny, with this weird grin on his face, and another time I saw him staring at Audrey and licking his lips. It didn't feel right, Agent Cooper watching and licking his lips like that.

But now we know. The Sheriff and Audrey and Agent Rosenfield found out. He wasn't really Agent Cooper after all. We have him back now, and Sheriff Truman says we saved him and he's gonna be all right. I want to believe him, but I'm not sure I do. I told Audrey, and she said she wasn't sure either. Just for once, she said, she was just gonna have to hope she was wrong.

^O^

**Dale Cooper, personal recording**

**June 27, 1989, 5pm**

Diane – in your view, does "numb" count as a proper feeling? I believe it does, but then, a great many things I once believed turned out not to be true.

Every day, often multiple times, a doctor will ask me to describe how I feel. They have made it clear I'm expected to express genuine emotion. Sadness, guilt, longing, regret… those all qualify. It seems numbness does not. When I used the word today, they told me it was not an emotion, but a blanket term used to distance myself from what I truly feel. And yet it's the only word that I've found comes even close to expressing my state of mind.

Gordon was here this morning. He brought me a Yucca – which I fear may not survive the lack of natural lighting in this room – and some news that has shaken me deeply. Federal authorities are still looking for Windom, and a nationwide search is on the way.

I must admit I hadn't thought of Windom at all. They may or may not have told you, Diane, but Windom vanished that same night I became trapped in the spirit world. In fact, I watched him be devoured by the same entity which took the life of Teresa and Laura and Madeleine, and who went on to possess me. He died before my very eyes, and I simply... banished him from my thoughts.

He used to be my friend. Would you believe I had forgotten that? He was my friend, and the fate that befell him wasn't even all that different from my own.

I would like to tell you how Windom was lost to me. Because it _was_ me who lost him, Diane; to madness or evil, I can't say. But I believed he was beyond saving, and by that I condemned him. Unlike my own friends, who have refused to condemn me.

I suppose it's hard to see how Windom could have been anyone's friend. Did you know he was the one who recruited me? He was still a young man at the time. He was already married to Caroline, and they seemed genuinely happy. There was little idealism left in him even then, but he had a taste for life like I'd never seen. He used to take me fishing, or driving, or out for a night on the town. He was larger than life to me, and some of the greatest truths of my life I learned from him. One day he told me, "Dale –" He always called me by my first name. "Dale," he said, "life isn't life without some peril to spice it up. You wanna keep your toes from freezing in winter, you'd better be prepared to light a little flame."

Then one day, of course, he lit one and it consumed him.

It wasn't even a particularly riveting case: a murder scene, a body, no obvious suspect. But Windom was utterly fascinated by it. He went missing while tracking down a lead, and by the time we retrieved him, roaming the alleys like a vagrant, his mind had gone. In its place was something else, an unsettling amalgam of fervor and malice which I couldn't place at the time, although now it seems so obvious. He entered into the Black Lodge. I believe he had been looking for it for a long time. On that occasion I am sure he did find it, or at the very least came closer than ever before, and what he saw there drove him mad with desire to return. I wish I had realized it sooner, when there was still a chance to stand between him and the darkness. I might have saved us all: myself, Windom, Caroline. But I was so steeped in self-righteousness I never even tried.

Looking back, I cannot find it in myself to judge him. Pity him, loathe him, detest him for his actions, yes… all those same emotions I now feel directed towards me. In the eyes of the world, I have committed unspeakable evil, or at least permitted it to happen. Knowing how incapable I am of forgiving myself, how could I ask others to? And if I failed to forgive Windom, then how should I expect any mercy for myself?

I told Gordon I wanted to testify on the circumstances of Windom's death. That, whatever Windom had become, I owed it to the man he used to be. What Gordon told me was simply, 'FORGET IT, KID.' Not even Gordon is convinced of my sanity, it seems. Later, Denise came to tell me they wouldn't take my statement because they do not consider me mentally fit. I think I blanked out then, at least for a moment. When I came to, Denise was embracing me, shrouding me in silks and a perfume-tinged warmth. She refused to leave even when I asked her. To have friends like those, who hang on for the ride however rocky it gets … I am beginning to see what a difference that makes.

In the end, if I couldn't forgive Windom it was because of Caroline. Anything else I might have attributed to his madness, but not the cold-blooded murder of the love of his life… and of mine. Even though it was wrong of me to love her in the first place. Or maybe because of that.

I wonder, Diane, if my failure to forgive Windom had less to do with his guilt than mine.

^O^

**Annie Blackburn, former Twin Peaks resident, former girlfriend**

**July 8, 1989**

I wish I could have helped him more than I did. But I'd just left that awful place, and I could barely distinguish reality from dreams, or dreams from memory; it felt like everything was wrapped into the same nightmare, a nightmare that just kept going on and on. It was all so confusing and raw. I doubted everything, my own judgment most of all. It's what that place does to you. It tears you apart. Dale knows that better than anyone.

When I woke up in hospital, I had no memory of who I was. My sister Norma was with me, and she said I kept on repeating the same nonsensical things. Calling for a man named Windom, who I remembered later was the man who took me – not in fear, but as if I knew him. Talking with a strange inflection, like I'd forgotten how to speak. Calling for Dale, begging him to save me, to save himself, to run. The doctors say I was delirious, but looking back I think I've never been so lucid in my life.

When my memory came back, the nightmares came too. I didn't know what they meant at the time; they were grim and confusing, and I had no idea they were memories of that place. I call it "that place" even though it's not a real place. It's a plane of existence where spirits live, the good and the damned and the wicked. If I escaped, it's only because Dale let himself be damned.

He came to see me a few days later. There was something about the way he looked at me; his eyes weren't Dale's eyes, his soul just wasn't in there. Something snapped in me, and I screamed and screamed until they sent him away. When I dreamed the next night, I dreamed about him: a man with Dale's face and those soulless eyes, stalking the shadows, waiting for prey. And the dream kept coming back. Sometimes there were young women, and sometimes children, and, just once, a teenage boy, but it was always ugly and violent, and I saw it as clearly as if I was there.

Dale came back one more time. He looked almost sad. Sad and mournful and so much like the real him that just for a second, I wavered. Maybe it was self-doubt, or maybe I was doubting him, wondering if he'd ever really been the man I believed him to be. But I couldn't shake the feeling. I still can't. 'Doubt is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness,' Flaubert wrote, and in my case he was right.

I pray for many things that can never be. That I had never met Dale. That I had never let him go. That I'd died for him in that place, if that could have saved him. Most of all I pray I can forgive him, because I know the person he was, kind and moral and good, but I've also seen what he did to those children. And I can't stop thinking about the choice he made. In the Black Lodge he traded his soul for my life. He never stopped to wonder if he should; maybe he couldn't bear to lose me, or maybe he just assumed I wanted to be saved. I did – I asked him, _begged _him to save me. But not at this price.

Dale made me an accomplice. Because I lived, BOB got to break free and innocents suffered, perhaps died. I need to come to terms with that knowledge before I could ever face him again.

I don't wish him harm. I still care for him, and I hope with all my heart he'll recover. I hope I can, too.

^O^

**Albert Rosenfield, FBI pathologist, co-worker, friend**

**July 12, 1989**

Let me tell you what I'm thinking. I'm pretty damned sure it's the same thing everyone involved in this godafwul mess has been thinking for as long as we remember, which is: now what? The story's finished; we saved our fair prince and brought him home; the big bad wolf has gone away, maybe even for good… so what the hell happens next?

Oh, don't look at me like that. You're a shrink. I know how you people operate. You say you want to help Coop, and that you need to hear the truth from our mouths, but then you run away screaming if those truths aren't pretty. Well, let's get something straight. I know Dale Cooper. I've known him for half my life – the better half, I'm not ashamed to say – and while I don't have the gall to presume I understand what he went through, I understand enough to know he isn't insane. And even if he is, say, _slightly_ more of a basket case now than he was on the day I first met him, it's a symptom, not a cause. Now, if you don't have even the shred of intelligence required to consider that a possibility –

No. No, I'm _not_ cracking. Yes, I realize my voice carries, how can it not through these paper-thin walls? But if you think you can phony up this so-called interview by putting words into my mouth and then refusing to hear the rest, let me tell you right now –

Here's the thing. I care about Dale Cooper. We all care about him, every one of us who followed him to this godforsaken hole of a hospital. We got him this far, and we're not about to give up on him now just because some sorry excuse for a therapist lacks the imagination to see he might be something other than a rapist and a madman. If you think _that's_ suspension of disbelief, you don't even know what we had to pull off to get him here.

I was an idiot to leave Twin Peaks in the first place. With Windom Earle on the warpath, no less. I got my ass back there the second they reported Coop missing for the first time, but really, I should never have left. I was still on the plane when he came staggering out of that clearing in the woods, and… by then the damage was done. Even if we were too blind to see it.

Harry is… He's a good man. Clearly that's part of the problem. I trust Cooper as much as anyone, but Harry – he's got a way of being blind to people's faults that, for someone in the law enforcement business, is really spectacular. Turns out I was wrong about the Horne girl, though. Audrey. You've seen her around. She almost lost a leg in a bank explosion – seriously, it never rains in Twin Peaks, it pisses down. I thought she was just a neat little package with lots of fancy wrappings and no substance, but turns out she was more alert than the rest of us put together. She was suspicious about Coop before any of us had even stopped to smell the roses. They were both in the same hospital, and apparently Coop snuck into her room one night and… made advances. Pretty insistent ones, at that. That's when the alarm bells went off; for some of us at least. Why Harry let Coop come back to the Bookhouse after that, no one knows. Wishful thinking, no doubt. But he did let me and the Horne girl in, too, which I guess was a sign of some intelligence.

For some time, nothing happened. Then… Ah, hell. Listen, kid, the point where this became any of your business remains a complete fucking mystery to me, but they said to be candid for Cooper's sake, and who am I to say one of you fellas might not pull a miracle out of their psychologist asses? So. About a week after he'd left the hospital, Coop turned up in my hotel room and tried to… Well. Let's just say the Horne girl wasn't the only cherry BOB was out to pick. Naturally, I turned him away. I should've realized right then – for fuck's sake, why would a guy like Cooper, however damaged by past experience, come on to a guy like _me_? As it was, I thought it was round the bend but genuine: some kind of delayed reaction to whatever trauma he'd experienced. I tried to let him down easy. As I said, I care about Coop. But he became defensive, hysterical. I should have put a stop to it right then, but I was too stumped to react, and before it could really get ugly he bolted.

The next day, he'd left Twin Peaks and probably the state. By the time we tracked him down, "ugly" was far too cheerful a word for what we found. But I'm sure Harry told you about that.

I don't know what made me go back and talk to the Blackburn lady – from what I'd heard, she'd come out of those woods just as cuckoo as Coop. But it turned out she had something. Research, she called it, if the world even applies to the utter tripe some of those books contained. She got them through the convent; most of them were about cults, devil worship, exorcism – all those charming spinoffs Christian faith has inspired through the years. But one of them, she swore, described the Black Lodge, the place she and Coop were supposedly taken to. And there was a section about casting out spirits, along with a recipe I managed to slap together, ludicrous as it was, from herbs and oils and a number of less legally obtainable substances – which is privileged information, I'll remind you. I was as shocked as the rest of them when it actually worked.

So now we're here. And I'm asking you: what the hell do we do next?

Cooper is… The thing is, with him, you never know. You think he's coping, and _he_ thinks he's coping, and before you know it the shit has hit the fan and it's like Windom and Caroline all over again, except worse. He never got over either of them. He never gets over anyone he's loved and lost. Coop is a lot of things, a stickler for duty and tough as a nail, but deep down he's always been a sentimental idiot.

Not too different from me, I guess. Pretty sure I wouldn't get over it if we lost him. So don't you dare tell me to resign myself to it. Don't you dare.

^O^

**Dale Cooper, personal recording**

**July 20, 1989, 5.30am**

Had a visit from Audrey last night. Not for the first time, of course. She's been a steady presence here, bringing regular offerings of food and well-wishes from Lucy, Andy, Deputy Hawk, as well as various other Bookhouse members. You'll notice I omit the 'Boys', Diane, as both Audrey and Lucy are now part of the team. To my question as to why she'd choose to spend her summer vacation in a mental ward in Spokane, her only reply so far has been an enigmatic smile. Sometimes she has lunch or breakfast in my room, and I have always been content to simply sit and observe, assuring myself she is looking well. Yesterday was the first time we truly spoke, and although I am – forgive the expression – dog tired, sleep has evaded me ever since. I do hope you've been sleeping well, Diane. A solid night's rest is truly a balm on the soul.

It seems Audrey has been in touch with Annie. I am… uncertain as to my feelings about this. So far, every attempt on my part to recall Annie's role in recent events has ended in disaster. I did not tell you this before, but early in my treatment a therapist persuaded me to describe my most recent memories of her. Except for a profound sense of guilt and despair, the details of the exchange are a blank. But I was told the instant the therapist had exited, I attempted to take my own life using the nail file they had somewhat recklessly left me. Please rest assured that it is not, nor has it ever been since that single occasion, my intention to throw in the towel, Diane. I could never be so inconsiderate with the hearts of those who risked so much for my sake. But you understand my unease where Annie is concerned.

Annie does not wish to see me again. She was involved in my rescue, in fact discovered the ritual which drew BOB out, and she bears me no ill will. But, as Audrey explained to me, she feels unable to separate Dale Cooper from the person BOB forced me to become. And she cannot forgive me for unleashing such evil on the world for her sake.

I can't say how grateful I am for having Audrey here. At no time did she express anger, impatience or pity. She simply sat with me, and when I was overcome with grief she held my hand like one would a child's. How far have we come, Diane, that I am to be the child and she the adult offering comfort and solidity? I'm proud of her. I even told her so today, although that may not have been appropriate.

I was aware, of course, that I… that BOB had attempted to force Audrey to be with him sexually. My memories of those events are vague and riddled with inconsistencies. But Audrey told me what happened. Also that she does not blame me. Although I regret any harm I inflicted on her, my relief when she assured me BOB did not, in the end, physically violate her, was overwhelming. Thinking about her, I am filled with a great tenderness and longing. Not the physical kind, although she truly is as beautiful as ever. I must learn to allow myself those feelings, Audrey has told me. She said it's all right if I find her beautiful, and nothing BOB did should prevent me from doing so. Like her, I will have to learn to separate BOB's actions from mine.

I told her about many other things, Diane, including my love for Caroline and my guilt over Windom. I explained to her that, despite the evil Windom committed, I cannot help feeling responsible, even if everyone believes this is absurd. When I was finished she straightened my pillow and told me about her father. I wrote down her words afterwards, because I wanted so much to remember them. She said: "I hated my father for a long time. Sometimes I still do. He only ever thinks about himself, he sleeps with young girls and pretends it's something to be proud of, he's embarrassed with Johnny, embarrassed with me... And for a long time I thought, because I hated him, that had to mean I didn't love him. But now I know that's not true. Whatever he did, he's still my father and I love him anyway, even if most of the time he doesn't love me back. I can't help it. And that's okay, really. Maybe it means I'm better than him, and maybe it just means I'm different, and that's okay too."

Then she went on to tell me about her hopes and dreams: she will graduate next year, and seems optimistic for the future.

There are many things I miss in this place, Diane, but one thing I have in abundance is time. I will need a great deal of it to process everything that was said tonight. But for the first time, I feel like there is a glimmer of light.

^O^

**Audrey Horne, Twin Peaks resident, friend**

**July 20, 1989**

I met Agent Cooper six months ago. Well, I know that's not really his title anymore, him being suspended and all, but I guess he'll always be a Special Agent to me. You don't mind if I call him that, do you? Laura died on the twenty-fourth of February, and he was in the hotel the next morning, on the twenty-fifth. That's the same date as when the Dalai Lama fled from China, did you know that? Agent Cooper wore this gorgeous black suit, and he was drinking black coffee with his hair slicked back, looking like a movie star. Of course, I didn't really know him then. Now that I do, I don't need him to look like a movie star. I just want him to get better. We all do.

It was strange at first, seeing him here – dressed in white clothes in a tiny white room that smelled like lemon and disinfectants. When I went in the first time, my hands smelled like lemon for hours after I left. Why is it that people look so much smaller in a hospital bed? When I was little, my brother Johnny was in hospital once with pneumonia, and I was sure they made the beds bigger on purpose just so the people visiting would feel more guilty and sad.

I've never felt guilty around Agent Cooper, but I think he does around me.

Everyone keeps saying how I saved him, and what a brave thing it was to do. But it was all of us together who did it. Agent Cooper is very lucky with his friends. They're not the kind who talk much or get together for dinner all the time, but friends who come when it matters. Real friends. It was them who found him, and found a way to make BOB leave; I was just the one who got to finish the job. I didn't feel brave at all doing it, but the Sheriff said it's also bravery if you're terrified, so I guess I did all right. And Agent Cooper said he was proud of me today.

I suppose I should tell the story now. Of how we saved him in the end. See, the catch is, we hadn't really thought about _how_ to do it. After he disappeared, everyone was just… stunned, for a while. I think I was, too. Did I tell you Agent Cooper came to me in the hospital? Oh – I was in a bank explosion, I forgot to say. My leg was hurt very badly. It was night, I was almost asleep, and when I opened my eyes he was right there. His face was all dark and strange, and he was smiling at me, but not like Agent Cooper used to smile. Then he put his arms around me and kissed me, and I was startled, but terrified too. Like something inside me had frozen over. That's how all of us were after he disappeared. Even Sheriff Truman. Doctor Rosenfield called in Agent Bryson to help, and for a long time they were… looking, I guess, without knowing what they'd find. What I mean is: of course we were all thinking what they'd find was BOB. I know _I_ was thinking it, and so was Lucy, and she told me Sheriff Truman was too. But not talking about it made it seem less real somehow. I used to think that was a stupid thing to believe – like how my father believes not talking about something can make it go away – but it didn't feel stupid this time. Then Agent Bryson called to say she'd found him, and what she thought he'd done to those girls and that little boy. And then there was no time to think much at all.

It had to be me. No one argued with me when I said so. All right, Sheriff Truman did a little, but I could see he knew there was no other way. I wasn't the only one prepared to do it, but I was the only one who could. Because Agent Cooper would trust me, and BOB would think I was just a silly little girl to have fun with, a girl who couldn't hurt him. And he'd be wrong.

When they drove me to the motel where Agent Cooper was staying, it was like I couldn't feel anything. Like I'd had ice cubes poured all over my body. The Sheriff wanted me to take a walkie to call for backup, but Doctor Rosenfield said that was ludicrous, and how could BOB miss a walkie in my pockets when he'd be getting his filthy hands all over me? He sounded really upset when he said it. So the walkie was out. Agent Bryson's car had a phone, though, and the motel rooms had phones too, which was good. They were gonna wait in the parking lot while I was inside. I had two little syringes – autoinjector, thank God, I hate needles, I couldn't do needles if I wanted to – sewn into my skirt. One with diazepam, that's a sedative. The other one, the important one, with something Agent Rosenfield mixed up himself. Lucy even got me these tiny stickers, blue for the sedative and red for the other one, so I'd know which was which.

It was all like a really strange dream – walking through the lobby, then taking the elevator to the second floor. The hallway had this striped blue carpet that looked new, so thick you could curl your bare toes all the way into it. Agent Cooper's room was at the very end, between a storage cabinet and a window. I think I stood there for a whole minute before I made myself knock.

His face was… My brother Johnny, he gets this look sometimes, when he has no idea if he should feel happy or angry or terrified; he'll get all wide-eyed, and his face will go stiff like those wax statues they make of famous people. That's how Agent Cooper looked when he opened the door. My knees went all weak at the sight of him, but I told him what I'd practiced with Agent Bryson: how glad I was I'd found him, and if I could come in, and if he could maybe get me a glass of water. He barely said a word, not even when I stopped talking. He just whispered, 'Audrey', in this soft, surprised voice, and then he turned suddenly and went to the bathroom for water.

I had just enough time to do what I needed to do. There was a small lock on the inside of the door, just like the Sheriff had said, and I locked it and hid the key in my panties. Then I took the blue syringe and put it in my pocket.

And then BOB came out of the bathroom.

I think I screamed. I'm _sure_ I screamed, I just… I – I'd seen the drawings, but they don't prepare you for the real thing. He just stood there watching me with those big, bulging eyes and that filthy white hair, and then he threw his head back and laughed. It was the most horrible sound I'd ever heard. I backed away. I guess he thought I'd try to make a run for it, because he jumped and grabbed my elbow.

I kicked him. In the kneecaps, as hard as I could, and then in the crotch, just like Sheriff Truman told me to. He howled and went down just long enough for me to yank myself free and get the syringe. I jammed it into his shoulder. He screamed and tried to grab me again, but he tripped, and I ran. I didn't think about it. I just raced to the bathroom and locked myself in. He threw himself at the door, still screaming, and then the sedative must have kicked in because suddenly he went down. I heard him crawling towards the other door, but of course it didn't open either, because I had the key with me. Then there was a loud thump, and nothing else.

Doctor Rosenfield had said I had to give it ten minutes. I waited for eight, and then I couldn't stand it anymore. I found him lying on his stomach on the carpet, his arms twisted under him, his face all scratched and bruised. But he looked like Agent Cooper, not BOB. And he was still breathing. I checked that first, before I unlocked the door and called the others. I got out the second syringe, the red one, and gave him the special drug. And then I prayed for him.

They weren't ordinary words. It wasn't an ordinary prayer, either; more like a ritual chant. Annie found it in a book, the same one Doctor Rosenfield got the recipe from. They had to be used together, the drug and the chant. After a few minutes the others came in, and Doctor Rosenfield sat next to me to check Agent Cooper's heart.

I'm no good at chanting. To be honest, I'd never done it before. But I sing to Johnny sometimes because it calms him down, so I pretended this was the same. It was hard at first, getting all the words right. But after a while they became familiar, until I didn't feel like I was saying them, but like they were saying themselves through me.

I don't know if it was something I did. But suddenly, it was like I could _see_ the words, winding around themselves in the room, around Agent Cooper and me and the others, getting thick and heavy, like smoke. Then Agent Cooper screamed. It was – I felt like my heart was being ripped right out of my chest. But they'd told me to keep up the chant no matter what, so I did, even when he started shaking and spasming, and suddenly _something _flowed out of him, something black and terrible and evil being pulled into that smoke. And then I stopped, and it was gone.

I felt really dizzy for a moment. I think everyone else did too. Sheriff Truman groaned like he was in pain, and I saw Denise with her hands across her mouth, like she was trying not to be sick. Doctor Rosenfield let out something like a long, shaky sigh; and then it was over. I looked up, and I met Sheriff Truman's eyes, and I knew he felt it too. BOB was gone.

They said I was very brave to do what I did. But it wasn't, really. If you know Agent Cooper, you know he'd risk anything for anyone, just because it was the right thing. He saved my life once. Put his career on the line for it. He also told me that what I needed most was a friend to talk to, and that he wanted to be that friend, and I guess he was right. Except now it's not me who needs someone, it's him. And I'll be here. Because that's what friends do.

I went to see him again last night. For the first time since we brought him here, we talked… and I do mean _we_, as in 'both of us'. He told me about Annie, and this man, Windom Earle – I didn't even know they used to work together, but Agent Cooper must have loved him very much. And I told him a lot of things, too, about my father and Johnny, and what I want to do when I've finished school. I don't actually want to be an FBI Agent, I guess. Too many rules. Agent Cooper smiled when I said that. The good kind of smile, the kind that didn't just reach his mouth, but his eyes too. There's still hope for him. I know it. If only we could make him see.

^O^

**Dale Cooper, personal recording**

**July 22, 1989, 10pm**

Diane – today is July 22, and it has been, as a nurse informed me this morning, six full weeks since I was first brought here. I'm unsure if the number holds any special significance. Possibly I completed some rite of passage making it this far, or else the good lady would simply be glad to be rid of me. I could hardly blame her. It's ironic that I had to be reminded of today's date, yet had no trouble recalling that on this same date fifty-five years ago, John Dillinger was killed by a team of FBI agents outside the Chicago Biograph Theater. Once, that thought would have filled me with pride. Now I merely feel empty.

I must confess, Diane, that for a while emptiness seemed something to strive for. After BOB, after being separated from myself, body and soul, all emotion felt unnatural, grotesque. How much simpler to be free of any emotion at all. To be frank, that is still my prevailing sentiment. But not always. Not anymore.

Audrey returned this morning. She brought me a new set of clothes to wear: jeans, a plain black shirt and a blue turtleneck sweater, all hand-picked from a store in town. Something to make me feel more like a person and less like a patient, is how she phrased it. I must say I beg to differ; the itch of a llama-wool sweater against one's neck is enough to drive even a sane person to madness. But the clothes were only a pretext. Audrey's real intention, as it turned out, was to persuade me to let her take me outside.

Know, Diane, that it's been six weeks since I was last under the open sky. I'm not at all certain if I could ever enter a forest again, or watch the moon rise over the treetops on a cloudless night, without the weight of memory crushing me. I have, effectively, become a shut-in. My heart was pounding as I stepped out into the sunlight, but then I remembered Audrey's face when I opened the door of that motel room: how frightened she was, and how fierce. In that, I found my strength. Audrey offered me her hand, and I found it warm and solid in mine. I held onto it as we walked through the back entrance, crossing a modest lawn dotted with dandelions, then circling an imposing laurel hedge.

They were all there. Denise, Albert, Harry – even Lucy and Andy. They were gathered around a wooden picnic table, their faces as tight with expectation as my own must have been with shock. Albert was the first to greet me. He stood and walked towards us, dropping the butt of his cigarette onto the gravel, and for a moment he and Audrey shared a look. Diane, I… I quite realize that Audrey cares deeply for me, and that Albert's concern for my well-being has long transcended the clinical and entered into the realm of profound affection, but… my God. If I had any doubt these people would go to the ends of the earth for me it was decimated by that look. Albert placed his hands on my shoulders, saying simply, "Only if you want this, Coop." All I could do was nod and take slow breaths as I gathered my courage. Then Audrey squeezed my hand and led me towards the table.

Harry was on his feet before the others. Would you believe, Diane, I couldn't even remember the last time he and I talked? Denise told me he'd worked with her to track me down, and I remember he was there at the end, when I woke up for the first time in control of my own body… but our last meaningful conversation must have been that night in the woods. He looked as weary today as he did then, and his voice had a battered quality to it.

"I thought," he told me, struggling to meet my eyes, "being taken by BOB… how could anyone come out of that untainted? But if anyone could, it's you. I should've been here, Coop, instead of beating myself up over what you might have turned into. But, well… I'm here now." It was a heartfelt admission, one by which I found myself both moved and deeply unsettled. Before I realized what was happening, he had pulled me into a full-body embrace. When he let go, I actually felt unsteady on my feet. I told him that I understood; that he, maybe better than anyone, knew BOB's corruptive power and was justified in his fear of it; and that while I am hardly untainted, I fully intend to atone for BOB's crimes. Then I had to sit down with my head between my knees as memories overwhelmed me. Harry sat by me, his hand on my shoulder, while I struggled to regain control.

Afterwards I embraced Denise, shook hands with Andy, and agonized over Lucy's offer to feel her baby kicking. Given the heinous acts BOB has forced me to commit, such unconditional trust feels alien to me now. But in the end I accepted. The little guy or gal packs quite a punch, Diane, that I can attest to.

There was a modest picnic laid out: whole-grain bread, cheese, honey, two thermoses of piping hot coffee. Simple pleasures, Diane. Such rarities in this strange and twisted world we live in, and yet it's the simple pleasures that are everything. I had almost forgotten that.

I wasn't able to stay very long. Thirty minutes, perhaps, before I felt physically and emotionally drained, and Audrey accompanied me back inside. But those thirty minutes gave me much to think about.

At some point in our lives there may come a time when we look into the abyss, and must find it in ourselves to turn away. I faced this challenge once before, Diane, as you very well know. After Caroline and Windom were lost to me, I also chose self-preservation. But emotion was not a part of that decision. Apart from duty and dignity, there was not a lot then to tie me to this world. This time is different, however. The very reason I find myself alive today is the devotion of these people I have been lucky enough to count as my friends. Whatever decision I make impacts not only myself, but them.

I remembered something else today. Sitting between Audrey, Harry, Albert and Denise, my mind was pulled back to our shared experience in that motel room. I could hear Audrey's voice, clear as cool water; I could sense BOB's rage, Albert's fingers on my wrist, Harry and Denise's steadying presence. And I remember the last image from before I left the Lodge. It was Laura. Laura's lips brushing my cheek, and her smile, which hid so many secrets, telling me as clearly as any spoken word that she forgave me, and that she wished me well. Laura is quite possibly the strongest person I've ever known, Diane. In the Lodge, she was the only thing between me and the darkness. For her sake, too, I must work my way towards redemption.

The fire BOB set to my soul is far from extinguished. Some of the scars I am sure will never heal. But maybe they don't need to. We are all scarred, each in our own way. What matters is not so much how damaged we are, as the ways in which we remain whole.

Good night, Diane. We will talk again tomorrow.

This is Dale Cooper, Spokane Valley Hospital, signing off.

^O^


End file.
